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The rise of Saudi Sun (SHMS): Leveraging Open Educational Resources and Capacity Building to Promote Access and Openness in Education�

Tahani I. Aldosemani, PhD

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Introduction

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Associate Professor of Educational Technology, PSAU, Saudi Arabia.

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Worked as Vice Dean of IT&DE and Senior Advisor at MOE and ETEC

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Research interest in open education and innovation in OE.

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The rise of Saudi Sun (SHMS)

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Openness in Digital Resources

Innovation in Education

Globalized perspectives

Sharing ideas

Collaboration

International collaboration

meaningful engagement

social, economic and technology

Access to education for all

deliver and access knowledge

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Unseco Definition(2002)

“Any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone anywhere can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them”

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UNESCO OER Recommendation

Build stakeholders capacity to create access, use

adapt and redistribute OER

Develop supportive policy

Encourage inclusive and equitable quality OER

Nurture the creation of sustainability models for OER

Facilitate international cooperation

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SHMS.sa

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National OER Program SHMS

Saudi Resources Network shortened to first initials to (SHMS) or sun in Arabic

50,000 + uploaded resources with 37,000 published resources and 20,000 in review cycle.

268854+ Arabic OER (95% from Saudi Arabia)

5334+ Ed content

25170+Course

12977+ Activity

37726+ video

10000 + authors

50+ institutions

7000 + SHMS ambassadors trained between 2017-2019.

50+ workshops for 5000+ educators.

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National OER Program SHMS

“We will continue investing in education and training and support our people with essential knowledge and skills for future jobs and provide all Saudi individuals with good education opportunities by offering a variety of alternatives” (Vision 2030).

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National OER Program SHMS

Inclusive and equitable quality education

Lifelong learning opportunities for all

Integrated mechanisms for sustainable development.

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SHAMS Strategic Direction

Create a culture of interactive open resources,

Standardized accreditation

Sustainable partnerships

Highly efficient budget and investment of resources

Equitable lifelong learning opportunities and effective learning for all

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SHMS Key Goals

Stakeholders’ participation in the enrichment of educational content.

Partnership with pioneering entities regionally and internationally.

Academics and students’ participation both regionally and internationally through nationally developed quality framework

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SHAMS Four Actions

Eliminate potential barriers or challenges including financial or accessibility issues,

Provide free and open access resources for educators and students with easy sharing and dissemination of licenses,

Ensure effective investment and sustainability of public funding

Create an environment of creativity and innovation that facilitates communication among all stakeholders.

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SHAMS Sustainability

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Change management plan supported by business continuity action plan

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Supportive team of recruited change catalysts to achieve holistic design and implementation of educational content for digital courses.

Administrative and financial governance structures of the program

Organizational mechanisms and regulations to disseminate, stimulate, and increase participation in the program.

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SHAMS two main pillars

Openness

  • free access to content.
  • freedom of search and browsing resources.
  • download and share content
  • open for learners at any time.

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Shareability

  • collaborative approach in content creation and enrichment
  • sharing and improving the quality of open content
  • collaboration with experts and connecting with educational institutions

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SHAMS Capacity Building

  • Build capacity of internal stakeholders and staff capable of leading and managing the national OER project. (Administrative and management)
  • Training according to the program structure and tasks and necessary skills for program’s implementation and administration.
  • Build capacity of external stakeholders (faculty members, educational leaders, supervisors, teachers)
  • Training on digital content authoring, curating , OER skills.

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Approach

  • First: Access to SHMS platform and enhance its application

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  • This goal was achieved through providing all students’ and faculty with SHMS membership to join the platform during the fourth quarter of 2017.
  • Teachers’ membership during the second quarter of 2018.

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Approach

  • Second : Continuous content improvement and support with rich educational resources.

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  • Third: sustainable financial support for operation, development, and content enrichment.

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Approach

Fourth:

  • Setting regulations of licensing policies for open educational resources and intellectual rights of authors
  • Regulate the relationships of stakeholders with OER.
  • Implementing proper mechanisms for utilizing appropriate OER licenses (enabling, replicating, modifying, compiling and distributing)
  • Adopting policies and regulations for building OER from educational services.

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In 2018, the Saudi Resources Network (SHMS) Platform were expanded to include all Saudi universities, General Education directorates, and training institutions.

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SHAMS Achievements

  • Successful partnership with thirty national entities including 16 universities and four ministries:

  • Ministry of Education, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resources, Ministry of Economy and Planning,
  • Education and Training Evaluation Commission,
  • Public Administration Institute,
  • Technical and Vocational Training Corporation,
  • Saudi Aramco,
  • Saudi Digital Library,
  • the Saudi Research & Innovation Network (Maeen Network).

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SHAMS Achievements

  • key private entities in E-Learning and digital content and resources Doroob, Tatweer Holding, T4edu Education Development Services.

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  • International partnerships ISKME, e2f, OER Educational Resources, Achieve, Creative Commons, and UNESCO.

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SHAMS Eight successful initiatives

  • SHMS Platform.
  • SHMS Author.
  • SHMS Cloud.
  • Rabeh (champion) license.
  • OER Distinguished Achievement Award.
  • SHMS Ambassadors.
  • SHMS Sana.
  • SHMS Certificate.

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SHMS Platform�

  • Courses and resources

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  • 22+ higher education fully online courses: King Abdulaziz University.
  • 4029+ high-quality educational resources for k-12 students: Ministry of Education.
  • digital content repository

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  • digital content design.
  • professional and personal development content. instructional systems content.
  • social communication content.
  • 110,000+ creative commons licensed photos.

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SHMS Platform�

  • Tools for knowledge creation and dissemination

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  • Voice recognition technology
  • hotspot pictures
  • answers guessing
  • Twitter feeds,
  • video and audio chatting
  • With compatibility with OER international standards (Sharable Content Object Reference Model, LTI, Metadata, Tin CAN API, IMS, LMS).

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SHMS Cloud �

  • Cloud-computing technology of indexed resources with keywords and descriptive data information including title, author, educational content type and license type.

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  • technical support team.

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SHMS Training �

  • Professional licensing through gamified training program of six levels each ends with Rabeh (Champion of knowledge with no boundaries) license.
  • The training program consists of OER Future Instructor Basic and Advanced with specific prerequisite on digital knowledge and skills.
  • Each program has its specific topics offering OER knowledge, skills and values:

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SHMS Training �

OER best practices and SHMS platform features and tools.

knowledge and skills training on design and creation of Multi Educational Media.

SHMS author portfolio.

Prepare instructors on E-courses and design skills.

Technology implementation in education.

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SHMS Training

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  • Instructional and training materials:
  • Creative Commons Organization,
  • Authoring and publishing Rights,
  • Creative Commons Building Blocks,
  • Creative Commons Usage and Licensed Publications,
  • Creative Commons for Educators,
  • OERs for Teachers and Students,
  • OERs for Everyone.

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SHMS Training

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  • 7101+ Members of, Rabeh License
  • achieved 200+ training hours
  • 15+ universities’ membership
  • 75+ educational institutions.
  • 376000 +Resources.
  • 108000+ HER resources, 268000 GER.

 

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SHMS Award�

  • Community engagement with OER on three categories.
  • Educational institutions
  • Members’ category for individuals
  • governmental institutions and private sector in three categories initiative, dedicated, and distinguished participants.

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SHMS Ambassadors�

Recruit talents in digital content production and publishing through OER and facilitate their contributions in SHMS .

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SHAMS Development

  • Support the Cloud Computing and the Single Access System 
  • The automation of educational resources policies and licenses 

at the national level

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  • Development of tools and means of writing and digital assessment 
  • building digital curricula
  • Provide digital content, courses, applications 
  •  repositories of educational training and digitization�

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SHAMS  innovation and scientific research�

  • Research program and grants  

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(scientific reports, studies, articles and journals relating on open educational resources)��

  • National Forum for Participation in the Circulation of Ideas, Innovations, Research Results and Scientific Trends in the Field of Open Educational Resources

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  • funding and sponsorship channels�� Creative development of products, programs, tools and applications of open educational resources for the transfer and adaptation of OER technology.

  

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References

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Bonk, C.J., 2009. The world is open: How web technology is revolutionizing education (pp. 3371-3380). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

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Open Resources for All (2018). shorturl.at/zJOUY

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Open Saudi Resources

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https://shms.sa/authoring/27941-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%81%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%AD%D8%A9/view

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